Luigi Bazzani

Documentation Artist of Pompeii

The Genaeceum (Women's Quarters) of the House of Sallust

I discovered this artist in the Naples Museum. Along with a huge collection of artifacts from Pompeii was a selection of intriguing watercolor paintings. I puzzled over the colors, more vibrant than most of the frescos I’d seen the day before on the site.

Turns out, starting in 1880 Bazzani spent 35 years of his life documenting the ruins. When first excavated, the buildings had vibrant colors; those colors have faded through time with exposure, making his paintings valuable to modern archeologists and scholars. And delightful to tourists.

Below, a comparison of a picture I took in Pompeii with one of his paintings. While not the same fountain, it’s easy to see his accuracy with color and detail.

He was also renowned for capturing chipped and decaying antique stone. A couple of examples: the exterior of a theater (from the website listed below) and a main street in a photo I took.

I’ll close with a picture I took of an atrium, the room at the center of the house where guests were welcomed and family occasions occured. It was usually open to the sky, which gave light and allowed rain to fall into the pool . And if you’d like to see more of his work, Wikimedia Commons has many examples.